The Weasleys
by Brynmor
Summary: AU. Harry Potter always wondered about how easily the Weasley family accepted him. Turns out, he wasn't the first child taken in. So yeah, this turned out darker than I intended. Whoops. One shot.


Harry is grateful at the way the Weasleys, without question, took him in, even after the twins and Ron are punished for stealing the flying car and rescuing him. But it does puzzle him. Surely Percy, so desperate for peace and quiet, must resent another child hanging around. The Burrow was stuffed to overflowing, and no one else had friends over. Surely there was no room for him? But Percy barely even seems to notice he's there, and certainly treats him no differently to Ron when he does. Ginny appears terrified of him, but not resentful. Ron and the twins are frankly delighted with his presence, and Molly and Arthur, while welcoming and friendly, don't treat him as a guest. They treat him just like Ron - and surely Ron should resent this? Dudley would certainly resent Petunia and Vernon treating Piers with the same affection they did for him, and his aunt and uncle had known Piers most of his life!

But he doesn't question his good luck. Not even when come Christmas time, he gets the exact same sort of presents as Ron and the twins. Percy's, of course, are slightly more academic, but also much the same.

Harry finds himself puzzled by Draco Malfoy telling 'Crabbe and Goyle' that the Weasleys weren't proper purebloods, but assumes it's because they're blood traitors. He finds himself further confused when he hears Ginny described as 'not a real pureblood', but assumes it's because she isn't a bigoted snob like Pansy.

Come summer before his third year, he is amazed that all the Weasleys apologised that he could not go to Egypt with them, since his legal guardians would not give approval. He doesn't understand, firstly, that he would actually be invited to go along on someone's family holiday, and secondly, that the Dursleys wouldn't grab the opportunity to be rid of him. But he doesn't question it. Not even when they apologise for not being there when he needed somewhere to stay.

Harry is devastated when he discovers he cannot live with Sirius, and have a proper family of his own, but Ron gives him the weirdest look, and tells him not to be stupid, the Burrow is his just as much as it is Ron's. Harry thinks Ron is a very good friend, trying to cheer him up, which is why he doesn't understand when Ron gets a letter telling them that Harry has to stay at the Dursleys before the World Cup. It would have been lovely to spend all summer with the Weasleys, but everyone had been treating it as a gone conclusion.

He is taken aback further when meeting Bill and Charlie at the Burrow, later. Once again, there was that unmistakable feeling of family, and belonging. He is unsure why Hermione and he were the only friends invited along to the World Cup - surely the Twins wanted to invite Lee Jordan, or Ginny would have a friend, or maybe Bill had a girlfriend - why did Ron get to bring not one, but two friends into special top-box seats, when no one else brought a friend? He tries to say something of this to Ginny, and later, Percy, and Ginny tells him Hermione was there because she was friends with three of them, and thus, had the heaviest weight. Percy cleared this up more by telling him that he was just as much a member of the family as the twins were. Harry thinks this is because Percy's peeved at the twins, but is puzzled by Ginny's casual acceptance of him as a sort-of brother.

Harry is filled with joy when Arthur yells 'Stop! Those are my sons!' but has no time to think on it, as his wand is discovered near the Dark Mark, and poor Winky was given clothes.

Ron is furious when he sees his second-hand, hideous dress robes, next to Harry's new ones. He says little, but Harry can see Ron is jealous. It's the first time Harry's been treated differently from Ron by the Weasleys, and he doesn't like it.

He is even more confused by Ron's jealousy of him. They have a flaming row, after Ron refuses to believe Harry didn't put him name in the Cup, where Ron yells at him it wasn't fair that Harry had everything - fame, money, good clothes and new books. Harry yells back that at least Ron has a family of his own, because Harry would give anything to have his family. Ron stops dead, and storms out of the common room. Harry thinks he saw tears in his eyes, and is confused.

Most of the common room was empty by this time, but the twins had stopped their running commentary, and gone quiet.

It's then that the twins sit him down in an empty classroom, and tell him about the patchwork family that calls itself Weasley. The reason they are called blood traitors, and 'not proper purebloods' is that a good percentage of the large family were actually adopted. And the pureblood traditions surrounding adoption dictated that no one could treat an adopted person differently - not if they were adopted as pureblood. A pureblood adopted muggleborn was essentially an elephant in a room - no one could ever mention it. It just wasn't done. The worst you could do was call their parents blood traitors - and that was still highly offensive.

They told him that the Weasleys never talked about their origins. They never treated each other any differently. They never thought about themselves as anything but Weasley. And that was because their origins weren't something to be talked about. They were all rejected - either from Dark pureblood families, or from ignorant, superstitious Muggles. They didn't have war heroes as parents. They didn't have dead parents wealth. They had an established pureblood name, and each other's acceptance, against the rest of the world's prejudice. It didn't matter that they might have a cousin or aunt they didn't like very much - firstly, you always backed them against everyone else, and secondly, you never, ever, threw their background up into their face. For the most part, no one outside the Weasleys even knew the background of anyone. But the Weasleys did. The adopted ones always knew they weren't good enough, because of their red hair, and their magic, and the superstition around it.

In as much as Harry was considered yet another Weasley, the fact was, he wasn't really. He had a proud heritage. He had a name of his own. And they weren't allowed to adopt him, because he had relatives to live with. Because of this, they couldn't tell him Ron's background, but they could tell him that they had been found in a Muggle cathedral, before they could even walk, with a letter saying they were demon spawn and could the Archbishop please take appropriate action to banish them.

It was with pride they informed him that accidental magic had started at a very early age. Apparently an entire suburb had needed Obliviating, including the highly religious and superstitious family from whence they had originated. They had refused to take the twins back even after magic had been explained to them.

Red-headed Arthur and Molly Weasley, who were unable to have children of their own, were the perfect candidates. Not that they had much choice, the Aurors were desperate to get the babies off of their hands, and practically dumped them in their arms and fled - or so Fred and George told it.

Tension was high between Harry and Ron for a while - the twins had forbidden Harry from apologising to Ron, because that would mean that Ron had something to hurt about, and Weasley pride dictated that _they had nothing to feel bad about_ because they had a family, and certainly no hurtful background. And Ron couldn't swallow his pain and anger at seeing Harry, beloved in the Wizard World, get yet again something he couldn't ever have.

Dragons are good for dealing with tension.

The Weasley family history isn't mentioned again, til Ginny tells him her story, the day after they got engaged. Her birth mother was a Muggle, engaged to a pureblood from the Selwyn family - her father was killed before she was born, and her mother stayed in hiding until Ginny was born. Not only did she demand a wizard family take her daughter, but she insisted she be obliviated of all memory of her daughter and fiance, and left for the Muggle world. She wants to find her mother, but isn't sure if she should - she doesn't want to hurt Molly's feelings, but needs to know.

Hermione finds her mother after two years of searching, when Ginny herself is expecting her first child. Hermione and Harry cannot bring themselves to tell her the truth, so they tell her her mother died ten years ago. She did, but of an overdose after smothering her second, and only other child.

Harry slowly learns the rest of his family's stories, bit by bit. Bill was a muggleborn street rat, picked up at six years of age after he found and entered the Leaky Cauldron. All he told people was that his mother was dead, and he never knew his father. It wasn't until he was 13 that he told his father that he'd seen Lucius Malfoy casually use a Cutting Curse on his mother as he and two other Death Eaters had passed through the slums.

Bill had brought Charlie home during his third year Christmas holidays. Charlie's parents had told him not to bother coming home during holidays - including summer holidays. Two years later they officially disowned him, and Molly and Arthur finished off the paperwork. Charlie never mentioned his birth surname again.

Percy was also a pureblood - his father had worked as a government spy for Voldemort during the first war, and his mother had died in Azkaban, a marked Death Eater. He never told anyone their names, either.

It was years before Ron could bring himself to tell his friend and wife his background. His father was a Death Eater, and was caught in the act raping his Muggle mother. The War was taking it's toll, and Obliviators and Aurors were stretched - her memory was wiped and her wounds healed, but no one checked for a pregnancy. His mother had assumed she was date-raped and the drugs and trauma had caused her to forget, but when strange things began happening around her toddler, she started to think either demons or aliens were involved, and promptly took him to both a priest, and a doctor. Eventually, the Ministry caught wind of the investigations the Muggles were conducting, and had a mammoth job cleaning up all the doctors' and social workers' memories. Like Ginny's mother, she asked that her memory of the child she already regarded as half-demon be removed, so she could have a chance at a normal family. Unlike Ginny, Ron doesn't want to find her.

It's then Ron admits why he was always so insecure - he can't remember very much of his real mother, or the doctors visits, or the Ministry workers who took him away, but he does remember crystal clear the woman who said to someone else 'I feel bad for shoving him onto the Weasleys when they already have so many, but really, who else is gonna take a Death Eater kid? No one wants the redheads as it is'. And although he never mentions it to his parents, he always knows they took him in only because no one else would. He doesn't blame them - four boys and a girl would be a huge family for anyone, even if the terrible twins weren't included. He's grateful they adopted him. He just wishes he had had parents like Harry's.


End file.
